The Perfect Match

by Kimberly Cates

  But Rowena hadn’t even reached the door when she heard something that raked her nerves. Sounds coming through the screen. A child sobbing.

  “Hurts, Daddy!” Mac Lawless wailed. “You always hurt me!”

  “I know.” Cash Lawless’ rough-edged voice answered. “I know it’s tight, honey, but it’ll loosen up if you just—”

  The hairs on the back of Rowena’s neck stood on end. What in the world was he doing to the child?

  “I hate you when you hurt me!”

  “I hate myself.” Lawless said with fierce feeling. “But damn it, Mac, I won’t stop. Got that? I’ll never give up. Never. Now come on, sweetheart! Open your leg and—”

  Rowena’s stomach clenched with outrage at the child’s tears, terrified at what might be happening behind the gray walls. Dread overpowered caution. Without stopping to think, she wrenched the screen door open and plunged in. Stripped down to a sleeveless white T-shirt and running shorts, the deputy had the child pinned on the floor, his big hands curved around her ankles…

  “Leave her alone,” Rowena cried, lunging to grab him around the neck and pull him off the child. But Lawless’ reflexes were too good. Before she could get a solid grip he dodged to one side, catching her arm, using her own momentum against her. In a heartbeat she was hurtling over him, Mac’s shrieks piercing the air.

  Rowena flailed, kicked, terrified she’d crush Mac, but Lawless controlled her flight. One leg snagged something on a side table, the sound of glass shattering in its wake. Rowena caught a glimpse of something glittery, pink just a second before she collided with it.

  Cash swore, trying to help her avoid the blow, but it was too late. The object she’d hit careened over from the impact, taking her with it, a horrendous racket making her ears ring. Pain burned under Rowena’s right eye as she struggled to untangle herself from whatever she’d fallen on. But the instant her mind registered the lines and shape of it, her heart slammed to the floor.

  It was a wheelchair.

  A child-sized, glittery pink wheelchair.

  She pressed her hand over her mouth, feeling sick, feeling foolish, feeling like…well…like she was about to be slapped in handcuffs and hauled down to the hoosegow. For breaking and entering. Assaulting an officer. Not to mention vandalizing his property. She stared down at the hideous lamp she’d shattered—well, his really ugly property.

  Slowly she shifted her gaze to the little girl she’d been trying to defend. Mac-sized metal braces encircled the child’s tiny legs. Elastic exercise bands and miniature weights scattered the mat rolled out on the taupe carpet. Stuff for physical therapy.

  Cash Lawless faced her down like one of her sister Ariel’s bad-cop fantasies, his broad chest heaving, his tanned shoulders sweat-damp, some kind of tattoo smudging his left biceps. He looked disoriented, hunted, his nerves stripped raw as if he’d just gotten up from a torture session on the rack. Maybe he had.

  He seemed to shake himself, trying to clear his head. “You.” He pinned her with eyes that were granite-hard beneath spiky black lashes. “What the hell are you doing in my living room?”

  For a moment Rowena couldn’t remember the answer to his question herself, let alone form it into a coherent explanation. At least, not with the deputy’s gaze peeling back the layers of her soul that way. She sucked in a deep breath, trying to get a little oxygen to her brain.

  “It was Mac…” Rowena stammered. “She was screaming, saying you were hurting her. I could see you bending over her from the door and I…” She faltered, remembering all too well the power in him, the size of him, leaning over the tiny child who seemed completely at his mercy.

  Somehow Rowena doubted the deputy would appreciate what her snap judgment of the situation had been. “I, uh…” She shrugged, undoubtedly looking as guilty as she felt. “I thought you…”

  His gaze narrowed. “It’s obvious what you thought.”

  Obvious and embarrassing. Rowena’s cheeks burned. The man would hate her worse than ever after this. She’d taken Clancy’s chances of being placed in the Lawless household from slim to none in less than twenty seconds.

  “What can I say?” Rowena swallowed a lump of defeat. “It’s official. I’m an idiot.”

  She glimpsed Mac moving on the exercise mat, pushing herself up to a sitting position and scooting her way over to lean against the wall. At least Mac was able to move her legs, Rowena thought in relief. Still, they looked far too thin, way too frail sticking out from under the ruffle of the glittery purple tutu about the little girl’s middle.

  “It’s a very bad thing to hit a policeman!” she accused with a formidable frown. “My daddy’s going to have to ’rest you now. And you’ll get handcuffs on and—Hey, Daddy. That lady’s bleeding.”

  “Yes, she is.” Was his voice a little softer, or had Rowena imagined it? The deputy probably came with that whole “if I get quiet be afraid—very afraid” warning Rowena’s mother had.

  Rowena’s hand fluttered up to the crest of her cheekbone. It stung, felt a little sticky. Great. She hadn’t just humiliated herself. She’d managed to get cut in the process. She could just imagine trying to explain the mark it would leave behind.

  Cash righted the wheelchair. He gathered Mac, tutu and all, in his arms and put her into the seat. There was something heart-wrenching in the big man’s gentleness as he buckled her in, set her feet in their tiny rainbow striped stockings on the footrests.

  “Guess I get to stop therapy while you take that lady to jail, huh, Daddy?” Mac chirped.

  Cash grabbed the white hand towel he’d looped around his neck, looking as uncomfortable as Rowena felt. “We’ll finish later,” he said. “Head on into your room and watch Dora the Explorer.”

  “Watch TV?” If the kid could have danced a jig, she would have. “Before my therapy’s finished?”

  “You heard me. Get out of here before I change my mind.”

  Completely unfazed by his growl, Mac flashed him a gleeful smirk then wheeled her chair down the hallway. Lawless watched until she vanished into one of the rooms. Silence fell, his utter isolation crushing all the anger out of Rowena.

  “I’m…so sorry,” she said.

  “Yeah. So am I.”

  He turned back to Rowena, but instead of slapping her in cuffs or bellowing at her or any one of a jillion characteristically hostile actions she expected from the deputy she loved to hate, he paced toward her, a bemused expression on his face.

  “You’re crazy.” Why didn’t the insult sound nearly as scathing as it should have?

  “You should talk to my mother.” She grimaced, then touched her cheek gingerly as her cut stung anew.

  Lawless’s eyes narrowed as if he’d just remembered the injury, as well, and he closed the space between them. Frowning in concentration, he grasped Rowena’s chin, tipped her face into the light streaming through the window. With the corner of his towel, he dabbed at the cut.

  “Doesn’t look like you need a stitch,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “A butterfly bandage will work just as well.”

  “In your expert medical opinion?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. We’re the first responders to accidents. We handle triage until the EMTs get there. Come on back to my bedroom.”

  Rowena’s surprise must have shown in her face. She could see the instant he realized what had given her pause.

  “I keep the first aid kit on the top shelf in my closet to keep it out of Charlie’s reach,” he explained. “That kid makes boxes of bandages disappear so fast I should’ve taken stock in the company.”

  Rowena hated the niggling suspicion he rekindled. Neglected dogs and neglected kids often had the same markers to indicate they were in danger. More injuries than usual were at the top of the clues to look for. “Does Charlie get hurt that often?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

  Lawless gave her a long look, as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking. “No. She just has this thing about Band-Aids. She’s al
ways afraid we’re going to run out.”

  Rowena remembered Charlie’s big eyes filled with dread as she’d talked about tidal waves. Was there a good reason the girl was busy making disaster plans for their future trip to Florida?

  “She seems…very worried for a child her age. I know it’s none of my business, but—”

  “You’re right. It’s not.”

  She’d hoped for some sort of insight, but she couldn’t exactly blame him for closing up tight. She was a stranger, after all.

  “Listen, I should just go,” she suggested. “You’re being a really good sport about this, but you don’t want me here, and after this is little debacle I sure don’t want to be here.”

  “You’re not going anywhere until I dress that cut. Move.” He sounded like a drill sergeant, and she doubted he’d hesitate to grab her arm and march her down the hall if she resisted. Instead, she let him herd her down the corridor.

  As they passed what must be Mac’s room, the child howled for Cash to adjust the television. Rowena waited for him outside the door, her eyes finding a collage of pictures on the long sweep of wall, family pictures of the girls from babyhood until just a few years ago.

  Rowena’s heart ached at the images she saw. Mac dancing in some kind of recital, her fluffy little costume making her look like a plump yellow chick. Charlie and Mac in doll-sized karate outfits. So Mac had been able to walk at one time. What had happened to change that? Rowena wondered. An illness? An accident?

  She examined the center shot of the collage—an eight by ten. One of those family holiday pictures Rowena had always dreaded when she and her sisters had gathered at the family brownstone. It pictured the Lawless girls in matching Easter finery on the front steps of the gray house, ribbon-festooned wicker baskets clutched in their white gloved hands. Mac appeared angelic in rose-petal pink while Charlie looked as if the ruffles that made up her collar had developed sharp little teeth that were gnawing into her neck.

  Behind the girls, Cash Lawless stood, sexy as hell in a black suit and Kelly-green tie, his crisp white shirt making his tan seem darker, his angular face all the more arrestingly handsome. But in spite of the formal clothes that fit his athletic body to perfection, something primitive glinted in his eyes—as if he were constantly aware danger could be right around the corner, and he’d damned well be ready to meet it.

  The exquisitely beautiful woman standing beside him was ice to his fire. Hair blond as Mac’s framed the woman’s face, but she possessed none of the fairy-like charm that surrounded the little girl. Cool, poised and elegant, the woman’s face was reminiscent of a young Sharon Stone, stylish cream pencil skirt and a tailored jacket without a single crease skimming a figure Miss America would envy.

  So this movie queen goddess clone was Cash Lawless’s wife.

  Rowena didn’t know why the fact should bother her. No doubt it was a holdover from that whole “matching” curse Auntie Maeve had stirred up in her mind so long ago. Making people and animals fit where they belonged.

  Obviously Cash Lawless had a strong opinion where Ice Goddess belonged. In his bed, underneath him, fulfilling all those fantasies the woman must have inspired in every other red-blooded man she met.

  The kind of hot fantasies Rowena would never inspire. Sighing, she smoothed a hand down her own jacket, realizing the man would be hard-pressed to discern whether she had breasts or not beneath the flowing yellow cloth. Not that she wanted Cash Lawless to notice her breasts, she amended hastily. Or anything else about her except what a perfect pet Clancy would be for his lonely daughter.

  Rowena peered again at the woman’s face in the picture, trying to probe beyond the one-dimensional image to the human qualities that ran far deeper. That made the woman a wife, a mother. One who seemed to have disappeared.

  Was she the reason Charlie and Mac had seemed so terrified their father would leave them? What had happened to her? To them—the perfect little Stepford family in the Easter picture?

  Rowena pulled her gaze away from the image and caught sight of a much smaller photo. It wasn’t one of those perfectly posed varieties. Instead, it looked a bit off-center, a little blurry. Charlie perched high in the forked branches of a tree, bracing a board while her father nailed it to what must be the floor of a tree house.

  Rowena scarce recognized the child in the picture as the ghost who’d scowled into her shop window for weeks. Charlie’s eyes sparkled with excitement, her grin so wide and carefree.

  Even more amazing was the difference in Cash’s face. Dressed in a faded Police Academy sweatshirt with the sleeves torn out of it, he looked ages younger.

  He wasn’t even looking at the camera. His gaze fixed on Charlie’s face as if there was nothing in the world more beautiful to him than his child, or more important to him than this moment he shared with her.

  Rowena felt a jab of envy. Making memories, Auntie Maeve had called times like the tree house moment captured on film. Rowena could still remember the spry old woman warning the ever-busy Nadine Brown that such opportunities were fleeting. Once gone, they never came again. Lost in her own wistful memories, Rowena was startled by Cash’s voice when he called out.

  “This is taking a little longer than I thought. Head on back. Mine’s the room at the end of the hall.”

  Rowena figured she could make a break for it, but if patching her up would make him feel better, she might as well let him. Besides, the man piqued her curiosity more than ever now.

  The first two times she’d met him, he’d seemed so hard-edged, almost military in his need to be in control. But today with his disabled daughter, she’d glimpsed cracks in that facade. Saw in the desperation, the determination limning his face along with the sheen of sweat, a sense of isolation that yanked at her heart.

  Hurts, Daddy… Mac’s tear-choked voice raked Rowena’s memory. I hate you when you hurt me…

  I hate myself.

  What must it be like for him? Suffering through Mac’s tears day after day? Realizing that no matter how hard he fought, there were some things beyond his power to control? And that one of them was his daughter’s pain?

  Entering the room he’d indicated, she looked around, trying to connect the man to his surroundings. But again, the setting didn’t fit him, his room yawning spaces of emptiness broken up by even more clusters of family pictures that marked places where furniture must have been.

  A double-sized box springs and mattress sat on the floor, the bed made up so precisely Rowena could have bounced a quarter off of the simple navy spread. A folding TV tray to one side held a windup alarm clock, yet another ugly lamp and a James Patterson novel splayed pages down somewhere toward the beginning, the one and only thing in the house that actually had a thick layer of dust filming its cover.

  After a moment, Cash strode in. “First aid kit’s in the other room.”

  She jumped, feeling as if she’d intruded in something painful, something private. “Right. I, uh, was just looking at your pictures. The one of the tree house in the hall is terrific,” she scrambled to explain, trying to break the sudden tension. “I always wanted a tree house when I was a kid. But my mom and dad weren’t big on that kind of stuff. You know, doctors’ schedules, volunteer work, making sure their kids had a jillion after-school activities that would look good on applications to Harvard Medical School.”

  What was she doing, telling him stuff like that? Next thing she knew he could ask the six million dollar question—with those family expectations, how did she end up here, in Whitewater, running a pet shop? Fortunately, he was too distracted by the picture tacked to his wall.

  His gaze narrowed and he ran one fingertip over the tree house. “I never finished building it,” he said. “Mac got hurt.”

  So Mac’s disability had come from an accident of some kind. Had she fallen out of the tree? Rowena wondered. No wonder he’d quit working on the thing. But it seemed somehow cruel to ask him outright.

  “How long has she been in a wheelchair?”

>   “Two and a half years.”

  “Mac’s injuries…what did the doctors say? Are they permanent?”

  His eyes blazed. “My little girl will walk again. Got that? She won’t just walk, she’ll dance the way she did when she was three. I won’t let that wheelchair be all she ever knows.”

  “No. Of—of course not.” Her chest ached as she remembered Mac in the little ruffled chick outfit, Mac with the purple tutu around her tummy when she’d been doing therapy.

  Mac, the little fairy child…everyone knew that fairies had to dance.

  “It must have been hard for you…and your wife.” She couldn’t help thinking about the perfect woman in the picture. The deputy’s face went cold.